Performance and Your Enterprise XML Web Application
XML and Performance Don’t Have to Be Mutually Exclusive

By Thomas Myer

Any time you use XML, you’re adding CPU, memory, and network overhead to your web application. This is a case study in what not to do if you want a fast XML application – and the things you need to do to make things better.[Read More]

PHP 5's Reflection Classes
New Ways of Documenting Code Effectively

By Peter Lavin

f you don’t use a class regularly it’s easy to forget some of its methods. If the class is user defined, this usually means rooting through the class definition file to find the methods you’re interested in. With large classes, this can turn out to be time consuming. For an internal class, you can point your browser to www.php.net and look up the information you need. However, there are more than 100 internal classes and interfaces, with fragmented documentation. In short, looking up information for either internal or user-defined classes can be time consuming. This article holds the remedy for such situations.[Read More]

Cracking Open Proprietary Formats
Converting MS Word and MS Excel documents into PDF using PHP

By David Berube

Microsoft Office documents are ubiquitous. However, the Microsoft Office suite is not available for all platforms and comes with a prohibitive cost attached to it. While a variety of open source readers are available to read the MS Office suite formats, you can’t always count on the user having installed one these readers. On the other hand, PDF viewers are common, freely available, and have a much smaller footprint than an office suite. This article will show you how to convert Word and Excel documents into PDF, using open source tools and PHP.[Read More]

Taking It Apart and Putting It Back Together Again
A Look at Partitioning in MySQL 5.1

By Jon Stephens

SQL doesn’t concern itself much with how and where data is stored but most enterprise level database systems provide some way of managing physical storage. So does MySQL 5.1.[Read More]

KINKY and Classy – Part III
Working with Layout and Creating Classes

By Derek W. Keats

The first part of the series introduced the KINKY application framework and explained the creation of an example module. In the next part, we took the sample module further, by including facilities for multilingualization, data access, and basic forms rendering using the KINKY application framework. This article explores the functioning of multicolumn layouts as well and the nitty gritties of authoring KINKY classes, and rendering standard-compliant HTML.[Read More]

PHP From the Shop Floor
PHP’s Role in Competitive Eating and Beer Advocacy!

By Elizabeth Naramore

Think you could eat 58 cow brains in 15 minutes? You’d have to if you want to break Takeru Kobayashi’s record with the International Federation of Competitive Eating. Not only does the IFOCE site take eating very seriously, it employs the use of PHP to power its site and bring the sport of competitive eating to the world. Likewise with beeradvocate.com, as its goal is to foster true respect for beer and to act as the most comprehensive Internet resource for anything beer-related. All the better that they would choose PHP as their vehicle.[Read More]